Cemeteries

Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its
graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built
after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded before 1154, and we understand it is still open.

J. Charles Cox, in Notes on the churches of Derbyshire (Vol 2) proposes that St Giles's Church was built and presented to the church of Lincoln during the reign of King Stephen, 1135-1154, and always an independent rectory - dismissing a theory presented by "that eminent antiquary" Dr. Pegge, who suggested it was originally a chapel of ease of Wirksworth.

The return to the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/449/2/7/17) for "the Parish Church, Matlock" indicated a healthy attendance on March 30th of 145 at morning service, and 143 in the afternoon, with 130 Sunday Scholars attending both a morning, and afternoon class. Interestingly, none of the 420 sittings were free, so there was no accomodation for the poor. The return was completed by W.R. Melville, Rector of Matlock, who gave his address as "The Rectory, Matlock, Derbyshire". Evidently the higher average attendance of 300 at both morning and afternoon service over previous months prompted him to remark that the average number of Attendants is not by any enumeration which has been kept, but is taken in round numbers at a rough guess"...

But to return to more recent times - Kelly's Directory of 1932, under the heading of Matlock, records "Matlock Town" as "the older part of the parish, containing the mother church", and situated about half a mile south-east of Matlock station on the Midland section of the London, Midland and Scottish railway. It describes St Giles as "in the Decorated style, seated on a high rock, thickly planted". It consists of chancel, nave of three bays, aisles, south chapel added in 1898, south porch, and an embattled western tower with pinnacles, containing a clock and 9 bells, one of which bears the inscription 'Sancta Maria Magdalena O.P.N.". The nave and aisles were rebuilt in 1871, and the chancel in 1859. A stained east window was erected the same year by Lady Paxton [presumably wife/widow of Sir Joseph?] to the memory of her mother; and by then, the church had 640 sittings.

he churchyard was enlarged in 1897 and again in 1919. In 1932, the living was a rectory, in the gift of the Bishop of Derby, and had been held since 1923 by the Rev. Alban Urling Smith L.Th. of Durham University, who was also a surrogate. St John the Baptist, in "Cliff road, Matlock Dale", is mentioned as a chapel.

For more information about St Giles, and other churches in the Matlock area, see Ann Andrews' excellent webpage of
Matlock Churches and Chapels.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here,
or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this
will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference SK3008159761. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays)
Zoom out to 1:100000 to see County boundaries, and 1:500000 to show Parish Boundaries.

Reference

Places recorded by the Registrar
General under the provisions of the Places of Worship
Registration Act 1855 (2010) is available as a
"Freedom of Information" document from the website
What Do They Know.

You can specify either a Place, or OS Grid Reference to
search for. When you specify a Place, only entries for that place
will be returned, with Places of Worship listed in alphabetical
order. If you specify a Grid Reference, Places of Worship in the
immediate vicinity will be listed, in order of distance from the Grid
Reference supplied. The default is to list 10, but you can specify
How Many you want to see, up to a maximum of 100.

You can further refine your search by supplying other search terms.

You can specify entries with ('Yes') or without ('No') photographs.

You can specify a church or chapel's Dedication, to restrict entries to
those containing the term you supply as a dedication. So for instance, 'John'
would return 'St John', 'St Mary and St John', 'St John the Divine' &c.

You can specify a Street address, and likewise 'George' will return
George Place, St George's Street, George and Dragon, &c.

You can restrict the search to classes of Denomination. The exact denomination
is always shown in the results, although the search is for broad types. So you
can search for 'Methodist', but not 'Wesleyan Methodist' or 'Primitive Methodist'.
'Multi-denominational' includes Ecumenical Partnerships, and
'Other' means anything not covered by other broad classes.

Please note the above provides a search of selected fields in
the Derbyshire section of the Places of Worship
Database on this site (churchdb.gukutils.org.uk) only.
For other counties, or for a full search of the Database, you might
like to try the site's
Google Custom Search, which includes full webpage content.

Further Information

This site provides historical information about churches, other places
of worship and cemeteries. It has no affiliation with the churches or
congregations themselves, nor is it intended to provide a means to find
places of worship in the present day.

For current information you should contact the place of worship directly via their website.